Why Your Credit Score HATES This Time of Year

For many of us, fall is a favorite time of year: The kids are in school, the leaves are falling from the trees, the festive season is just around the corner, and comforting smells like pumpkin and cloves and turkey fill the house.

You and I might revel in the crisp autumn weather, but your credit score hates this time of year.

The reason? Starting in October and continuing through the next 90 days, many households dramatically increase their spending: Halloween requires candy and decorations and costumes (and, probably more candy if you ate the first batch); Thanksgiving requires turkey and all the fixings (and maybe more candy); Black Friday is a spend-happy time to get great deals on gifts (and on the things you’ve been wanting to buy all year); Christmas requires gifts, stockings and more.

See Where You StandSign up at Credit.com and get your FREE credit score & report card. Plus see how you compare to others. FREE & updated every 30 days.Get Started Now »

Those are just the “regular” days that most people celebrate. If your family has a birthday or celebrates other social or religious holidays during this time, it increases spending even more. Your expenses might also rise this time of year as you run your furnace, put winter tires on the car, and book a vacation to a warmer climate. October through December is 90 days of fun, festivity, candy and turkey – it’s also 90 days of spending.

If you’re not paying cash for everything, credit cards are the easiest way to spend during this season.

There’s also another reason that your credit score hates this season: Everyone is so busy with special events and pageants and banquets and holiday parties that we tend to put a lot of our good habits on hold — including the good habit of focusing on maintaining and boosting our credit scores.

By the time January rolls around, we realize that we need to tack “Rebuild credit” onto our New Year Resolutions — somewhere between “Lose the holiday weight” and “Eat less candy.”

Fortunately, your credit doesn’t have to suffer this season. Along with adopting careful spending habits, make sure you follow these simple tips to ensure that your credit has a festive season too:

Carefully use your credit cards to keep those accounts active but never put more onto your card than you can afford to pay off.

Schedule time to work on your credit score and stick to your schedule! (Why not achieve two goals at once? For every candy you steal from the Halloween bowl by the door, you need to spend an extra 5 minutes working on your credit score).

Remember that even small credit decisions you make now now can have big repercussions in the new year.

This is a time of year that many people look forward to, but it’s too easy to put the responsibility of working on our credit until later. Resist the temptation of ignoring your credit for the rest of 2012, and you’ll give yourself a gift that will reward you all year long next year!

Look there is loop holes in how to get credit reports and score. If you go to your banks website they may have an id theft service that you can try out for 30 day trial. billing will occur on the 30 day so make sure you cancel before the deadline. Please be considerate to the agent you speak with on the phone when you cancel. The agent is just like you trying to make a dollar and has to try to rebuttal to save you or the will get fired and the cancellation goes against that persons numbers. The agent main focus is to help you but are required and pressured to save customers. when you call to cancel say you are permanently moving out of the country to India or ask for a supervisor at the beginning of the call before you let them know you are canceling, every company has exceptions on agent call rate if you say the right thing. Please be kind to agents and only screw the company.

chris

What does that have to do with this article? And I don’t think they get fired for not preventing you from canceling your trial. What is the point of your comment?

Chris—-I think that brian is trying to give you (and me and everyone else) an easy way to check our credit. Why not use the info. instead of asking questions that are not very productive—BTW , good thing they don’t base credit on being socially acceptable; isn’t it ?

The offers that appear on Credit.com’s website are from companies from which Credit.com receives compensation. This compensation may influence the selection, appearance, and order of appearance of the offers listed on the website. However, this compensation also facilitates the provision by Credit.com of certain services to you at no charge. The website does not include all financial services companies or all of their available product and service offerings.

Certain credit cards and other financial products mentioned in this and other articles on Credit.com News & Advice may also be offered through Credit.com product pages, and Credit.com will be compensated if our users apply for and ultimately sign up for any of these cards or products. However, this relationship does not result in any preferential editorial treatment.